Hey Americans, how do you like our national anthem? You might've heard it in Vancouver, about 14 times.

A new trend is sweeping the nation: contemporary music with increasingly sexist themes is being heard from coast to coast, and little is being done about it. A hit song called “O Canada”, written by Quebecois rapper Calixa Lavallee in 1880, is spreading its message of sexist hatred across the nation. This song’s vulgar message was reportedly omnipresent during the recent Winter Olympics, and is now even in our public schools. I’ll give you a taste of this song’s misogynistic, sexist nonsense, but don’t say I didn’t warn you:

“True patriot love / In all thy sons command”

Filth. Luckily, OUTRAGE IS BREWING!

The Parliament’s going to “consider” doing “research through a Parliamentary committee” to see whether or not, maybe, there’s a possibility, that lyrics changes could be considered, to something more inclusive like “In all of us command”. In other words, nothing’s happening, and nothing’s going to happen. Stop frothing at the mouth about preserving our proud heritage, crazy-eyed National Post columnists ready to pounce. There’s probably no story here, considering that the idea of changing the anthem lyrics to be more inclusive is about 3 decades old by now, and nothing’s changed yet.

But still, let’s all get outraged!

Alright, who can we get to serve up some outrage… how ’bout, maybe a University professor, tee up a talking point, aaaand… here’s one now!

“The national anthem should reflect its population and Canada consists of 51 per cent women.” – Adele Mercier, Queen’s University Prof

[Now play this sound clip]

Hold up a minute, you mean there’s WOMEN in this country? When did THIS happen?

(You guys know that later on it says “God”, right? Like, in the same song? I mean, I don’t want to get you too worked up.)

Alright, this is a dumb, ancient argument, it’s the sort of thing they probably made junior high debate teams argue about in the 80s because (a) people get really fucking worked up about it for some reason, and (b) both sides always win, since if you’re anti-lyric-change you’re a rational sexist, but if you’re pro-change you’re irrational but inclusive.

I’ll outline all your possible dumb, smug-faced arguments, rating their validity on a scale of Smug Emoticons, represented as:

#1: ARGUMENT: Changing the anthem disrespects our country’s history and traditions. Actually, chump, the anthem’s already changed lyrics as late as the 60s, which is why old people look confused when they’re singing the anthem, because they still remember the old version (with a couple extra verses of “We stand on guard”, or something) they learned as kids. Plus, it’s debatable what the original English lyrics were anyways, and the English lyrics are just an awkward copy of the original French. It’s not exactly a firmly-grounded historical landmark of our people, is what I’m sayin’.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#2: ARGUMENT: A sexist national anthem reflects poorly on our country. Here’s a news flash: other than seventh-graders doing geography assignments on foreign countries, no one gives a shit about anyone else’s national anthems. You probably only know the US anthem from watching too much American sports, you know the tune of the badass Soviet-era Russian anthem, and maybe the British anthem as an imperial throwback. If you’re a real trivia buff, you might know a couple other countries’ anthems, with that information stored in the “interesting nonsense that might come up on Jeopardy” cortex of your brain. As you heard at the Olympics, a lot of countries have some truly awful-sounding anthems too, and pretty much all of them have outdated, embarrassing lyrics. The American anthem’s an unsingable drinking-shanty about the British bombing the shit out of Baltimore (if you’ve been to Baltimore lately, you’d probably think the bombing wasn’t so long ago.) The British anthem’s a tune so stuffy and old-fashioned that the only nouns in the first verse are “God” and “Queen”, two concepts the British are increasingly apathetic about. In short, no, the world doesn’t care about our anthem, since they probably have a worse one.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#3: ARGUMENT: If we start giving in to these fringe political-correctness types, what’s next? Easy, National Post columnist. There’s no slippery slope here. Even if you let the feminists win the anthem-lyrics battle (SPOILERS: they won’t), it won’t lead to some topsy-turvy ultra-PC country of your hyperbolic nightmares. Broads already got the vote. Your “If we let them change O Canada, WHAT’S NEXT” schtick is about as strong a point as American wingnuts saying “If we let gays marry, then we’ll have to allow polygamy and bestiality and incest and statutory rape!” No you wouldn’t, you walking First-Year-Psychology-course-lecture-on-logical-fallacies.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#4: ARGUMENT: Harper’s just doing this as political posturing to appeal to female voters. Yeah, probably. But fuck, could you imagine a more miscalculated strategy? Your “base” is white, middle-aged male traditionalists, and you’re considering talking about changing our country’s national anthem to be more feminist? But you’re right, this is definitely some political shit right here: Harper’s basically trying to call the opposition’s bluff here. “Hey Iggy, you guys are all about that feminist junk, you wanna change the national anthem? No? Well, you’re sexist, because we’re considering doing it. Oh wait, you do now? Way to alienate average Canadians, we weren’t actually gonna do it!”

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#5: ARGUMENT: They’re not gonna change the thing, because it’d be a huge pain in the ass. THANK YOU, you’re making sense now! You’re right, it would be a gigantic PR mess to try to change a national anthem that we all have implanted in our minds. They’d have to waste all this money changing documents and putting out press releases, and there’d be a huge opposition who just say “fuck it we’ll keep singing it the old way”. We’re a stubborn nation by default, and we don’t like messin’ around with the norm – whether it be getting bent out of shape about Peter Mansbridge standing at his desk, or Torontonians still calling their concrete baseball-toilet “Skydome” after a good half-decade of it having a different name. Our stubborn laziness trumps all other arguments. Yeah, the anthem’s not as ideally inclusive of women and non-Christians as it could be. But it’s not that people don’t care about the plight of women. We’re just lazy. Your Female Editor, and every other ovary-bearing human I polled about this topic, agreed – the prevailing sentiment being “fuck it, I’m not relearning the song lyrics at this point, and no one else wants to either.”

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

Well, that settles it.

Our national anthem’s sexist.

But, at the risk of presenting an oxymoron, our collective apathy is near-militant in its enthusiasm.

[Article: Globe]

• > A purse by any other name: The Globe & Fail have continued their Pulitzer-worthy pursuit of Stockwell Day’s manpurse. In the third (!) such article about Doris’ murse, Jane Taber has bravely nailed down this story using Woodward & Bernstein-style investigative reporting. In the first mention, we learn that the Minister does indeed carry a murse, while in the breathless followup we learn just what he carries in his lady-bag: “a few legal documents, passport, wallet, small change purse, business cards and personalized note cards, mints, hand sanitizer, family photo and latest book I am reading.” (Omitted: lipstick, miniature chihuahua). Finally, in the penultimate story which will ultimately get Taber the Pulitzer, we get to see a picture of this stupid thing. JOURNALISM!

• > Prem. Williams’ Open-Heart Club Band: You’ve all heard about Danny Williams getting his heart tuned up in the States, right? And you’ve already twisted this dude’s cardiac problems into a politicized storyline about the state of Canadian healthcare, right? Good! Then we’re done here.

• > He’ll just PVR the curling, it’s better in fast forward: Obama’s not coming to our fancy little Olympics. We will get Diet Obama in the form of Joe Biden, who’ll ride the Amtrak here from Scranton and commit a bunch of Patented Biden Gaffes(tm), like pretending to be interested in luge. Hey, remember those photos that looked like George Bush was doing all this wacky drunk shit at the Olympics, being all sweaty and red-faced and holding up backwards flags and spanking volleyball players? Hah, what was WITH that guy.

• > Girl Power unseen since Sporty Spice: Harper’s new thing, his legacy, his sole and devoted cause as a head of state, is now Plight Of Women Worldwide. What, you didn’t know that? Come on, how could you not think of Harper as synonymous with the issue of women in developing countries, a topic he’s tackled all of never times. Iggy to Harper: “If you love women’s health so much, why don’t you marry it provide support for safe abortions?” Harper spokesman to Iggy: “Huh? What? HEY LOOK OVER THERE.”

Captain Picard just read the PPP's policy handbook

Welcome to our new series, Better Know a Fringe Political Party Recognized By Elections Canada! Today in part 1 of our 15-part series, we look at the People’s Political Power Party of Canada  – the fightin’ PPP’s!

Before we go to their website, let’s take a look at Wikipedia for a fair-and-balanced assessment of just what the hell we’re getting into with this party. Although quite alliterative, their name doesn’t offer much in the way of specificity.

According to its party platform, the party is neither socialist or democratic, but is a “Centre party to first bring value as top priority to woman, the mother, mothers to-be, mothers that were.” The party further intends to “remove” poverty, that “Canada will never become a military zone,” and that it “will bring back the seventh day as a family day”. In terms of environmental issues, the party believes that “there is no reason for over population, much less of poverty. When you bring respect for women in the family, you have all these problems resolved, abortion and all.”

What… the… fuck?

Let’s see if we’ve got this right. Step 1) Respect Women. Step 2) ???? Step 3) All of society’s ills are now gone!

Alright, Wikipedia must be pulling our legs. I mean, just look at how they sarcastically put quotation marks in front of the word “remove” in front of poverty, you can just tell that whatever teenager wrote this article was rolling his eyes in mock-derision. Let’s go to their website and get it straight from the mother-lovers’ mouths!

Centre: Roger F. Poisson. Left, left-centre, right-centre, right: Women that he's gonna liberate the SHIT out of.

Leadership

The PPP is led by Roger Poisson, an old-ish chubby dude with a strange view of the world and an even stranger stream-of-consciousness style of typing pages of barely-comprehensible ramblings. According to Roger, his education level is “Grade 9, plus further education in learning from the mistakes of the elite politicians and how to avoid them.” Well then!

Every other person associated with the PPP seems to be female, which leads me to believe that Roger is one of those creepy dudes who acts super-interested in women’s issues just to surround himself with ladies. He’s like the douchey guy you knew in college who went to Women’s Studies seminars and talked about how sensitive he was, vying for the attention of the females surrounding him. Combine that guy with the creepy allure of a cult leader and you’ve got Roger Poisson!

Policies

The party has a handy flip-book of policies! Let’s go to the first page. It’s probably gonna try to draw in the readers with some pretty generic, populist principles, right? Let’s see the first paragraph of policy…

We will bring value and moral respect to the women who have come from mothers, who become young women and who could become the new mothers of the nation. When you degrade women, promoting the dissection of the motherly value of women, by pornography, by promoting drugs and alcohol, by immodest fashions, you degrade women and insult the family and ultimately the nation. Such promotions defame the character of women.

So, you’re gonna fix Canada with some form of pseudo-religious Goddess worship. Also, no porn. Also, the very existence of drugs and alcohol are somehow degrading women. And we’re gonna put our women in some sort of Amish burlap frocks to cover their immodest bodies. That’ll empower ‘em up good!

Wikipedia listed PPP as a feminist party, but honestly, this doesn’t seem like modern feminism to me, it seems like a creepy combination of dominatrix-worship and the Taliban. Let’s ask Maple Rag female correspondent Jenn, what do you think of this party whose sole goal is empowering you as a woman?

Jenn: Porn, drugs, alcohol and immodest dress are awesome. Fuck this guy.

Poverty Policies

I won’t even bother copying out what it says on their “Poverty” page. For one, this guy’s sentence structure and grammar are so bizarre that I can’t even bear to transcribe it. But basically, their poverty policy boils down to this: all poor people and disadvantaged groups in Canada should join together in revolt against the wealthy oppressors and corporations. The elite will be forced to give up their wealth to eliminate poverty in one fell swoop. Really, and they call themselves a centrist party? If the complete abolition of capitalism is centrist, I don’t want to see what left-wing is like.

Healthcare Policies

EVERYONE WILL BE HEALTHY IF WE JUST HOPE FOR IT! I’m not kidding, that’s their healthcare plan. They propose an ambitious 50% reduction in healthcare costs simply because people will be happier and full of hope and dreams under a PPP government.

Justice Policies

Oh my sweet Jesus, they can’t possibly be saying what I think they’re saying:

“We, as the PPP, will empty the prisons of prisoners [...] We will call on our military to impart moral values to criminals who are resistant to change. They can earn a career in the military and earn a sense of self-worth, by using their strength in defending the women and children of the nation, and in helping out in emergency situations.”

Good Lord. What sort of evil genius comes up with an idea like that? Freeing every prisoner in Canada and making them join the fucking Army. This is an official political party recognized by Elections Canada. Hundreds of Canadians vote for this party. And they want to free every prisoner in Canada and make them join the Army.

Economic Policies

They want to eliminate all forms of taxation while also eliminating the national debt – no, running a MAJOR SURPLUS in fact – while giving huge payment to aboriginals and farmers, providing free post-secondary education, transferring ownership of all natural resources over to all citizens and having all Canadians share in corporate profits. I mean, sure, why the fuck not? Anything is possible with PPP magic happy juice!

Military Policies

“Terrorism will disappear because we will take the time to listen to the distress of others and find solutions for living peacefully.”

Sure!

“The PPP, with the hearts of its members, will deliver world peace.”

Okay!

Youth Party

Awesome, there’s even a PPP Youth, let’s check it out!

Awesome! There’s, uh… 20 kids in it! And they share four different surnames! It’s ALMOST as if a few people signed up all of their kids at once to be in this terrible club! There’s proof that only one kid joined by their own free will, Victoria, who writes:

I wish I can live in a nice place with no wars. Nice like no hurting people. Stop the bad people. I would like to be in the club called PPP youth.

This Victoria kid’s just as well-spoken as Roger Poisson! And her letter contains no spelling mistakes, which is leaps and bounds above the official PPP policy booklet’s spelling! Sign up this child immediately and run her in the riding of Churchill, Manitoba in the next election!

Conclusion

Everything written on the PPP’s (admittedly well-designed) website rots my brain from the inside out. I could literally make fun of everything written on this site and have enough content to run this blog for a year, but the PPP is just so soul-crushingly bizarre that I now hate all Canadian fringe parties.

So join us in our next installment, where we’ll look at another Canadian fringe party!